Need a ride? It's a tap or two away

By Antonia N. Farzan | Mercury

Wednesday

Jun 18, 2014 at 12:01 AMJun 18, 2014 at 10:00 AM

It’s 1 a.m. and the bars have just closed. You call for a taxi and are told that it will be an hour and a half wait. You call another company, and they don’t pick up the phone. A pedicab driver cycles by, does a quick costs-benefits analysis, and decides that it’s not worth hauling you home. What do you do?

a) Call everyone you know with a car and hope that you’re not waking them up.

b) Walk home, then wake up the next morning wondering why your feet are bloody and covered with dirt.

c) Accept a ride from a stranger after you’ve texted their plate number to five of your friends.

d) “Borrow” a bike.

e) Eat three slices of Via Via, drink a bottle of water, and then decide that you’re OK to drive.

It would be nice if going out in Newport didn’t have to end in a game of Choose Your Own Adventure. But this summer, there are other options: Uber and Lyft.

First, you download their respective apps. (If you don’t have an iPhone, Blackberry, or Android, sorry, you’re walking home.) Then you set up an account with your credit card information. Next time that you need a ride, all that it takes is two taps to set your location and request a pickup. You can even track the driver’s progress and watch as they make their way over to you. There’s no need for cash, and no need to stand outside looking for a cab.

Uber is not a taxi service, but a “ride sharing” service. In fact, if you are over 23 years old, have a Rhode Island driver’s license, and your car is less than 10 years old and has been registered, insured, and inspected, you can apply to be a driver.

Uber’s closest competitor, Lyft, has also begun quietly operating in Newport, although representatives from the company won’t confirm or deny it. Both companies are operating in Providence. If you’ve seen a car driving around College Hill or on Newport’s Ocean Drive with a giant pink mustache attached to its front bumper, that was Lyft.

Taxi drivers are concerned, to put it mildly. “I’m not looking forward to it. It’s going to take business away from us,” Jennifer Hussey, a driver for Cozy Cab, says. “I think it’s a good idea, but this is our livelihood. All the cab drivers are concerned about it.”

Pedicab drivers, whose business model relies heavily on the spontaneity of drunk people, are less concerned. “Whatever people see first is what they’re going to take,” Alicia Siravo of Pirate Pedicab says.

Uber announced June 6 it had obtained $1.2 billion in new financing to peg its valuation at $17 billion. Venture capitalists are betting that ride sharing services like Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar will replace taxis. But that won’t happen until the world is populated entirely by people who own smartphones and know how to use the App Store. Uber’s users are mostly young, and tend to have less disposable income to spend on things like cab rides than their parents and grandparents do.

I conducted an informal survey asking people in downtown Newport if they’d heard of Uber. The oldest person who had was 25. Everyone else gave me a blank look. Michael Godsil, 58, from Naugatuck, Conn., thought he might have seen something about Uber in the paper. He didn’t have a smartphone, and didn’t see himself using the service. “I’m not really an app guy,” he said.

Pam Slomba and Julie Green, both 71 and from Billerica, Mass., didn’t like the idea either. “I typically don’t take a taxi,” Slomba said. “We walk, like we’re doing right now.”

A group of 20-year-olds from Dublin were more enthusiastic. They were in the process of walking the three miles from Howard Street to the Motel 6 on Connell Highway when I met them. It was a cold, rainy afternoon, and the only taxi company that had picked up the phone told them that it would be a 40-minute wait. They’d chosen to walk instead.

Uber is controversial, and there is plenty to dislike about the company. Their surge pricing model means that rides may cost three times more if there’s bad weather. The company’s CEO has been bragging about how many women he attracts as the founder of a successful start-up. And what happens if someone is injured when an Uber driver gets into a car crash? A driver who did not have a passenger in the car hit and killed a 6-year-old girl in San Francisco last New Year’s Eve, leading to a civil complaint against the company and all kinds of questions about liability coverage.

A lack of precedents makes the service look like a lawsuit waiting to happen. According to Rhode Island’s Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, which regulates taxis, Uber is totally illegal. But clearly, the system that we have isn’t working. It’s impossible to find a taxi when you need one, i.e. on a Friday night in summer. Pedicabs can only take you so far. RIPTA buses rarely take you right to your destination. And good luck trying to bike or walk in heels and a dress. Newport is just not an easy place to get around without a car. Ride sharing services entering the market may be the first step toward changing that.

Learn more about Uber’s Rhode Island expansion at http://blog.uber.com/risummer

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